How Deep The Bullet Lies
by Red Bess Rackham
Summary: Division took Sam and broke him into a million little shards, swept them all into a box, and then buried that box somewhere so secret and deep that Owen never found it. Sometime after that box is ripped opened and Sam is shoved back together, he tries to find out who he is when he realizes he's not Sam and he's not Owen, either. (For Yuletide 2016)


_A/n: This was written for Yuletide 2016, for SummerRed. I wanted to try something a bit different and focus on the mess that is Owen/Sam, (I really tried to work more Nikita in there, but it ended up becoming all about Owen/Sam!). So I hope it worked and I hope you like, my dear Yuletidee, SummerRed. :D_

 _Big thanks to my faithful betas, Stars & Hope & Cari. :D_

* * *

 **How Deep The Bullet Lies**

 _sam._

He'd never claimed to be some damn saint. He never claimed to be good, or normal, or whatever the hell else—honestly, he doesn't even know what those things mean, thinks maybe he never has, and doesn't care.

Sam passes over a few packs of heroin and flashes Scotty a cocky smile.

"This is the best idea you've ever had," Scotty admits. He packs the drugs tight into the crate, and Sam helps him layer supplies over the drugs to conceal their presence.

"Damn straight," Sam agrees. "Just think—you'll be able to get that sexy red Lamborghini when you get home."

Scotty laughs and dusts off his hands.

Later, Sam counts out the money in the barracks with the rest of the guys, and they all greedily stash their shares of it. Honestly, Sam's only sorry he didn't think up this whole thing up sooner; they'd be rolling in it by now if he had.

A dozen missions later and they basically _are_ rolling in it. He keeps a tight lid on their plans, oversees the details, and coordinates buyers. He leaves nothing to chance. He trusts the guys, sure, but only so much—no honor among thieves and all that. Drugs are money, and it doesn't matter who's running it where, as long as he gets his cut. Sam's happy.

So, maybe he should've seen it coming in the end.

Sam strides into the warehouse, anger and shock rippling through him, when he sees Scotty and the rest of them packing the newest run of crates without him. His crates. He must've ignored the warning signs of this mutiny—if there were any. He can't remember.

He thought the boys needed him, and that they were very clear on whose idea this whole thing was in the first place. Turns out they're a bunch of back-stabbing assholes, and Sam's too pissed off to think about much else other than pumping them all full of lead.

He gets a few shots off before he takes one (Two? Three? He can't be sure.) to the chest and falls to his knees. Copper and gun smoke mix in the musty room. A set of red-spattered combat boots amble towards him, stepping over spilled heroin.

"Sam? Sam, you still alive?" Scotty says—taunting, mocking.

If Sam weren't bleeding out on the floor, he'd sit up and strangle the bastard. He blacks out when the next shot from Scotty's gun goes through his back.

* * *

 _owen._

He doesn't think about it all that much. It's just a mess, one he's tasked with cleaning up. The fact that it's blood and brain matter and other body fluids doesn't make him queasy. If he knocked a jug of milk off the counter and had to get down and clean it up, it wouldn't be too different. It's still just a mess.

Owen scrubs the carpet, adding some of his Division-issued solutions to make it spotless, stainless, residue-free. Every tiny piece of glass gets picked up, every knick-knack set exactly back in place. He finishes touching up the plaster-filled, painted-over bullet holes in the wall and backtracks out of the room, wiping his footprints away as he goes.

Sometimes, he's the one doing the deed, and he's better than most, which is probably why he's Percy's favorite. He does it clean and quick and quiet. Accidents—gas leaks, heart attacks, drownings—don't bring nearly as much attention as disappearances or gun fire. Owen releases his hold on the man in the water and heads back down the dock.

Back in his apartment later that night, he cracks open a beer with the same hands that murdered an agent's loved one. Whoever she was, she shouldn't have gotten involved—she knows the rules about Division as well as he does. He sets down the bottle and holds up one of those hands, turning it over to see the callouses on his palm, gained by years of fighting and training with guns and staffs. Studies the new bruises where the man had struck him in his struggle to stay alive.

Maybe it should bother him, he thinks. All of this. Cleaning, killing, Division. But that's not how he was trained. Programmed. Not who he is. Maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with him, broken on a cellular level, and it can never be fixed.

Maybe that's exactly why Division picked him.

Owen grabs the beer again and swallows a gulp of it—it's too flat and hoppy for his taste, but it's cheap and it'll do. It's not his place to question anything, so he doesn't. Just flips on the TV and dozes on his old, secondhand couch.

* * *

 _sam._

The shittiest thing about waking up is knowing how much time he's lost. It's kinda like being some pathetic coma victim, sitting up in a chair and knowing ten years have passed without having living them.

Sam supposes he did technically live them, in a sense. But he lived them as a fucking zombie, a brainwashed mannequin shoved around and posed, pushed one way then the next. He's not about to do it again, so he gets the hell out of there, as far away as he can get from these assholes and their damn revolution or rebellion or revenge-mission or whatever the hell it is.

(He's all for shanking Amanda too, but he's got other stuff to worry about. Like getting some damn cash for his trouble.)

Sam's got a lot of time to make up and he's sure as shit not going to waste any more of it. Playing at having a moral high ground is too exhausting, so it lasts about five seconds before he's smacking Micheal around and getting out of Division once and for all. He's not going weak in the knees for Alex's moony eyes or Nikita's heartfelt pleas, because he's not the sucker they knew, he's _not_ Owen, and he never will be again.

He floors the accelerator and lets out a laugh. It's good to be doing something for himself again.

He'd go back and find Amanda if he could, if she weren't busy fighting her obsessive little war, so she could clean out the memories left behind of those ten Owen-tainted years. The images chafe and irritate, scratching at his skin like a burr under his shirt that he can't get rid of.

Sam remembers being Owen, trying to be _so_ righteous and passionate and _struggling_ with so many shades of gray, learning to be loyal and fair and find a cause he _believed_ in. Remembers the way Owen laid himself out for the likes of Nikita and the rest of her merry gang.

And for what?

It's total bullshit, and Sam shoves it away as best as he can, because there's money to be made. Getting weepy about losing ten years won't gain him a dime.

* * *

 _owen._

Being a Guardian is easier, in a lot of ways. He has to constantly look over his shoulder and be ready to drop everything in a split second should someone come after the black box, but there's a lot less murder and cleanup. Then Percy sends him to Montreal and has him stay put, blend in, and disappear and sit still.

It's a little jarring to go from a shadow and Percy's favorite in-house Cleaner to one of seven secret Guardians, taking care of Division's dirty secrets. But he's not here to question what Percy orders him to do, so he takes on his new mission with just as much intensity as he always does.

And everything is perfectly fine, until the exact moment it's not.

A year in, he notices her. And her smile sets him off balance like he missed a step going down the stairs. They exchange pleasantries by the mailbox a few times here and there, and then it's a couple weeks of checking the mail an absurd number of times a day in order to _happen_ to see her.

Emily breezes into his life like no one ever has. When she collapses, he doesn't even hesitate, doesn't even think to. Sitting beside her while a nurse hooks up her up to a dialysis machine, it's the first time in eight months that he's not thinking about Division.

"I'm Owen, by the way," he says, sort of awkward and shy. It's not a persona he's putting on—he really has no idea how to interact with her, knows he absolutely shouldn't be, given his line of work.

"Emily." Her hands are as soft as her smile. "Thanks for, um, rescuing me."

She wrinkles her nose and it might be the best thing he's ever seen in his life.

"Anytime," he replies. "I mean, not—I don't want you to be—you know, but, if I'm around—wow, please say something and stop me."

Emily laughs.

And just like that, Owen's world crackles apart bit by bit, like glass that's just been broken and hasn't yet tumbled out of its frame.

People, generally, are interchangeable. They're targets or victims or blissfully ignorant sheep, and he doesn't have the clearance to know or care which is which until he gets his orders. He doesn't question anything, he just does what he's told and puts the mission first. That's what being a Cleaner meant, and being a Guardian still means.

Owen sees the world in black, and that's just how it is, ever since he woke up in Division and they handed him a purpose. That's how they built him and he literally doesn't know anything else.

She, however, is something incredible. She's delicate and fragile, she's sunshine and colors, she's glowing and incandescent and gorgeous and kind. She floods his chest with warmth and he adores the way her lips frame his name. His breath catches when she brushes past him or when she slips her fingers nervously through her long, dark hair.

He never saw her coming and he didn't stand a chance.

* * *

 _sam._

He manages to dig up some old contacts, find some leads, and get himself on a list for hire—the kind of list you can find only by having the most shady, cutthroat "friends." Money is money, and Sam doesn't care who's handing it over or for what, as long as he's paid. His accounts are empty or long shut down—that stupid asshole Owen's been noble for some reason or another—and he's got to replenish them somehow.

Sam collects a bundle with blood on his shoes. (Somewhere in the back of his head, he thinks he's guilty, but he erases the feeling before it can throw him off.) He hops to Jakarta and makes a killing when he smuggles in some high-grade weapons. (His gut twists a little when the warlord grins, but Sam turns away and dismisses the moment as leftover Owen impulses.)

After that, he hits up Thailand on the trail of a bounty and passes over the head-in-a-box as dispassionately as the duffel of cash is passed on to him. (It's not until he's driving away that his shoulders tense and he wonders about the victim's family, and regret burns his throat, and he thinks of Emily and no, _no, he doesn't,_ he swallows and drives faster.)

When he's counting the bills from another job in a seedy hotel in Rabat, Sam grins and sighs, because he's finally almost back to where he was before Division swallowed him up. It's kinda like being back on top again, and he'd be lying if he said that smacking his knuckles against flesh didn't feel _damn_ good.

It makes him wonder how normal stiffs get through their day, without the high that black violence and cash gives him. If he was stuck in some boring-ass nine to five, he'd probably smash his fist through a stained glass—

Sam freezes, the memory surfacing and bouncing around, unbidden.

 _Emily walked around the counter. He paused for a second before her, watching the way her menagerie of stained glass pieces in the kitchen windows sparkled tiny kaleidoscopes across her hair. He wanted to ask her to marry him, right then and there—_

Sam shakes his head, uncomfortable at the emotions surging through him—they're not _his_ , damn it, but they keep attacking him and he can't banish them. They're his memories and yet they're utterly not.

He pictures Emily's smile even though he tries not to—not caring is a hell of a lot easier than caring. But he can't stop it and his stomach lurches and roils and suddenly his monetary spoils seem paltry and pointless. Sam curses and kicks the duffel bag away from him, money spilling over the side.

 _Shit_.

Owen's damn shiny morals are wedged somewhere inside him, and he can't scrape them loose. Division took Sam and broke him into a million little shards, swept them all into a box, and then buried that box somewhere so secret and deep that Owen never found it.

It irks him to wish Amanda hadn't torn open that box and unleashed Sam. It sickens him that he's starting to hate who he is, who _Sam_ is, and to prefer damn Owen's complicated shades of grey to the enduring blackness Sam has always known.

He brushes off the urge to protect Alex and help Nikita—they're just as bad as Amanda and he _needs_ to get away from this whole shitshow. But he can't help it. So he circles back and makes sure he covers Alex's back at the bank.

And he goes to Paris, because she asks him to, and because whatever's left of Owen inside seems to be a lot stronger than whatever's left of Sam.

* * *

 _owen._

He takes his shoes off just inside her door and, for a moment, Owen's assaulted with how unworthy he is to step into her world, how much of a mistake this is.

Emily's tiny apartment is a joyful yellow, dotted with happy paintings. Her couch is piled with vibrant pillows, her furniture is mismatched and loved, and every available space is filled: plants, knickknacks, vases, craft projects. He's afraid to tarnish any of it just by existing—his blackness blotting out her color.

But Emily smiles, and his insides miss a step as they always do, and then somehow he's smiling back, and coming over for dinner, and then it's two or three or four months on from there and she's curled around him in her bed.

He draws a line in the sand in his head, then, as he's holding her close, smelling the tropical-flower-fruit-whatever shampoo she uses. On one side of that line is her, and him with her: beauty and innocence and student loans, popcorn and a movie on Friday nights, dark purple lipstick and coconut hand lotion, stained-glass art and tender kisses.

On the other side of it is the rest of him: Division-sanctioned assassinations and following orders, body parts disposed of and the blood scrubbed out from under his fingernails when one his gloves got a rip in it, protecting Percy and the black box, and the ever-present darkness in him. Knowing he's doing _exactly_ what he's been ordered to kill others for in the past.

He keeps it up for a while, but then she gets into his veins. She crosses that line, scuffs it until it's barely there. She splashes white and light and color into all that blackness.

"I've done things," he whispers, to the ceiling of her joyful yellow bedroom. A set of headlights streaks over the wall. "Bad things."

"I still love you," she tells him, nuzzling her face against his shoulder.

He clenches his teeth and bites out, "You wouldn't if you knew what I've done."

She sit ups at that, watches him in the dark for a moment. "Yes," she says simply. "Because I know you. And I love you. And you know how to do the right thing—whatever you're worried about, you can make it right."

Emily kisses him sweetly and tucks herself into his side.

That's when Owen starts questioning, and he doesn't stop. And then the blood sticks to him, even if it never touched him, even if he washed it spotlessly clean. He keeps looking at their faces and wondering who they were, if they were like Emily. Who loved them, who will miss them now that he's taken them away.

That coldness he used to have about this, the detachment and distance when it came to his job, dissolves, eaten away by Emily's love—the love he doesn't deserve. Suddenly, Owen _needs_ to deserve it. He has to be better.

He should've known Division would never let that happen. He knew she was changing him and Division didn't pluck him from obscurity and program him to be their puppet for nothing. His escape plans go up in a hail of bullets.

Owen catches Emily before she can hit the ground, but the blood soaks her shirt and his, and she doesn't manage another word before she's gone.

"Emily, no, no, look at me…" he cries. Bullets shatter her stained-glass butterflies and the sparkling shards rain down.

The worst part is the hollow her death leaves behind. The way the color fades to black again. He knew what it was like to be real and human and like other people. He knew what it was like to love and to care.

That's why he gets the tattoos then, one at a time, so he will never, ever forget. He won't let that color be gone forever.

Even if her blood will never wash off of him completely.

* * *

 _?_

Somewhere between falling for Emily (the _one_ if there ever was _one_ ) and falling for Nikita (shit, who hadn't at some point?) and falling for Alex (he never saw that one coming and couldn't quite shake it) and finding his path through all of Division's crumbling, re-building, and re-crumbling, Sam has changed. Sam isn't even Sam anymore.

But he's not Owen, either. He's some…messed-up, twisted hybrid and he doesn't know how the hell to sort that out. Somehow, going back to Alex and Nikita is the thing that makes sense, even if he spends most of his time in their presence silently trying talk himself out of it.

"Shit," he laughs to Alex when he's banged on her door a little before midnight. She's got her gun on him, rightfully so, and he holds his hands up.

"What the hell?" she growls at him, sleep-deprived and trying to catch a few hours before they gear up to take on the Shop again.

"Look, I know you probably don't need some dumbass, borderline-schizo on your team, but…but I can't go back and I can't move forward. I figured…"

He trails off and he can hear Sam sneering and Owen begging to make apologies, but he's neither, he's no one, he's…

She watches him for an unending moment, her eyes searching and tracing and something wars inside her. Then she lowers her gun.

"You need help," she states, but it's soft and understanding and he doesn't deserve her kindness, not for a second. "You need a purpose again."

Disagreement jumps to his lips—that's Sam—but Owen swipes it away with his tongue. He gets a grip on the conflict battering around his ribs and says, "Yeah."

So he helps them topple the Shop and squash Amanda. And he kisses Alex and he signs up to be her bodyguard and he tries very, very hard to sort out who the hell he is. He's not Sam and he's not Owen.

It's somewhere around six or seven months later that he picks a new name and starts a new life, and, finally, his world falls into place.

 **-end-**

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 _A/n: Thanks for reading! Feedback is love. :D_


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